The geography of high-value biodiversity areas for terrestrial vertebrates in Western Europe and their coverage by protected area networks

摘要

We identified high-value biodiversity areas (HVBAs) of terrestrialvertebrates according to a combined index of biodiversity (CBI) for eachmajor taxon and a standardized biodiversity index (SBI) for all taxa in2195 cells of 50 × 50 kmin Western Europe to evaluate whether these areasare included in the current protected area networks. The World Database onProtected Areas (WDPA) and NATURA 2000 protected area network were used toassess the protected area cover in HVBAs. WDPA and NATURA 2000 weregeographically quite complementary as WDPA is more densely represented inCentral and Northern Europe and NATURA 2000 in the Mediterranean basin. Atotal of 729 cells were identified as HVBAs. From the total of these HVBAareas, NATURA 2000 network was present in more cells (660) than the WDPAnetwork (584 cells). The sum of protected land percentages across allthe HVBA cells was 28.8%. The identified HVBA cells according to the SBIincluded 603 or 78.2% of all vertebrate species in the study region,whereas the identified HVBA cells according to the SBI for individual taxaincluded 47 (90.4%) species of amphibians, 79 (74.5%) of reptiles, 417(88.5%) of birds, and 130 (91.5%) of mammals. However, neither networkwas present in 7 or 3% of the identified HVBA cells. Thus, we recommendexpanding protected areas in Europe to fill this gap and improve coverage ofvertebrate species to strengthen biodiversity conservation.